


No Greater Love

by rangerhitomi



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: M/M, Past Lives, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 11:10:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3408374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/pseuds/rangerhitomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When every star in the heavens grows cold, and when silence lies once more on the face of the deep, the only forces that will endure are love, faith, and hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Greater Love

His bloodstained sword is slack in his grip. The stars above are obstructed by the churning black storm clouds, flashes of lightning the only illumination of the fetid plains where hundreds of men – many of them his friends and comrades – had lost their lives in a war Durbe did not understand.

Drowned out by the deafening crash of thunder, he chokes out a name, over and over.

_Nasch. Nasch. Nasch…_

He chokes out the name of his king, but there is no response. He doesn’t expect one, does he, but his desperation mounts as his voice rises; he is soon screaming the name between rumbles of thunder, screaming the name as he stumbles through the bodies littering the battlefield, because he cannot be the sole survivor of this carnage. He is screaming through the tears flowing freely from his eyes, and the only reason he knows it is his tears and not the rain is because they are warm on his skin.

“ _Nasch_!”

The sword drags behind him in his loose hold, the very sword his dearest friend had given to him. How Durbe has soiled such a precious gift by spilling blood with it.

But Nasch isn’t coming back, and Durbe falls to his knees and slams his fist on the bloody earth. It isn’t fair, it isn’t  _just_ ; Vector had killed Merag, had killed Nasch’s men and Durbe’s friends and now he… he had taken Durbe’s best friend from him.

_Best friend._ Durbe chokes out a mirthless laugh. To Durbe, Nasch is more than a best friend. Durbe loves his king. He had sworn to lay down his life for him, had sworn to protect and serve and  _save_  him; he had hardly protected him. Who is he now to serve, with Nasch gone?

_“What is on your mind, my friend?”_

_Nasch looks up from the map and Durbe feels his heart break at the sight of the king’s prematurely lined face. He is so_ young – _they both are, really – and there had been no chance for Nasch to experience a childhood before he had been weighed down by the chains of responsibility, forced to govern an entire kingdom. Here, in this makeshift command center in a hastily constructed and dank tent in the middle of nowhere, sits the child with the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Am I doing the right thing?”_

_Durbe kneels next to his king and looks up into the tired blue eyes. Nasch looks ten years older. “You’re trying. Sometimes that’s all you_ can _do, my friend.”_

_And Nasch’s face crumples, his hands reach for Durbe’s shoulders; Durbe lets him slip from the makeshift throne onto the floor and lean into his shoulder, lets Nasch clench his nightshirt with desperate fingers, and lets Nasch cry on him._

_“If I tried h-harder,” Nasch whispers through his hiccups, “M-Merag would… sh-she might still…”_

_“Shh.” Durbe tucks Nasch’s hair behind his ear and rubs his finger over Nasch’s tearstained cheek. But he can’t trust himself to speak. He can’t bring himself to try to comfort Nasch with empty words. And for a while, all he_ can _do is let Nasch weep for the lost innocence and the future he once had._

_Finally, Nasch pulls far enough away to look into Durbe’s eyes. He looks like he wants to say something as he touches Durbe’s face, and Durbe leans into it, forcing back his own tears. He can’t let Nasch see his weakness. He has to be strong, when Nasch is vulnerable and afraid. He has to be strong for Nasch._

_A few times, Nasch opens his mouth and closes it again, until finally he pushes forward into Durbe’s embrace, resting his head in the crook of Durbe’s neck. “You must really love me,” he murmurs, wrapping his arms around Durbe’s waist._

_Durbe’s heart constricts. He does, but not in the way Nasch must think. He has no right to that degree of Nasch’s love. “Why do you say that, my friend?”_

_Nasch is quiet for a minute before he leans up to give Durbe a kiss on the cheek. “You hate killing. You hate it, Durbe. But you followed me and you haven’t even tried to talk me out of this and I hate it because I don’t want to stain your soul with my…” He trails off. “Your soul is pure, Durbe, and I don’t want to change that.”_

_He longs for those lips on his own, but Durbe closes his eyes instead and pulls Nasch closer. “I have no love of killing, my friend, and neither do you. But I will follow you into Hell, because you are my king and my friend and I will not let you stain your pure soul, either.”_

Had he known he would never see Nasch again…

The storm stops as abruptly as it had come, and Durbe looks up through watery eyes toward the heavens. There is a break in the clouds where a family of seven stars clusters together, with one shining brighter than the rest.

* * *

 

“Why do you keep sitting out here?”

There is something familiar about this storm. They are becoming more frequent in Barian World lately, vicious storms that send white-hot bolts of lightning streaking across the sky, while chunks of red stones as large as Durbe’s fist crash through the air, leaving craters behind in the earth, but this particular storm seems… special, somehow. It reminds him of something _important_ , though he doesn’t know  _what_. It’s there, just out of reach. There’s a missing piece to the puzzle of his existence, and he wants so much to find it.

Durbe doesn’t answer Mizael, because they’ve had this conversation before.

Mizael crosses his arm and stares at the sky. “It’s been years, Durbe.”

“I know.”

“He’s not coming back.”

But Mizael was wrong; Nasch would come back. Durbe believed with every particle of his existence that Nasch would come back. “He isn’t dead, Mizael.”

“If he was alive, he would be here by now. He’s gone, Durbe, and no amount of wishing is going to change that.”

Durbe is silent as Mizael heads back into the crystal palace. He reaches into his cloak and pulls out the crest that Nasch left with him before he and Merag abruptly vanished.

_Something is… wrong_ , he’d said before handing the crest to Durbe.  _I want you to hold onto this._

_What do I do with it?_

_Take care of it. Someday, I’ll need it back. You’ll need to be the one to do it._

_Why me?_

_Please trust me, Durbe. It can only be you._

“Where did you go, Nasch?” he whispers, pulling it to his chest. He can feel the faint energy of Nasch’s pure, sweet soul trickle through it, and for hours he holds onto that symbol of his faith that Nasch will someday return.

* * *

 

The seven stars go out, one by one, and Durbe’s star is next.

There is no card in his hand that will win the duel, but he can… he can force a draw. If he loses his own life, at least he can take Vector with him, at least he can end Nasch’s physical suffering.

He looks up and sees that young human staring down at him, the same human with the straightforward soul and the crass way of speaking and the aura like the power of a crashing waterfall, a violent sea in the midst of a typhoon. He gazes into the eyes of the young king he once loved, in another life, and though the eyes belong to the same man, they are not the same eyes. There is the sorrow of betrayal, the conflict, the heartbreak and helplessness and anger and… and he shouldn’t have to endure this again. But Durbe was too slow, too weak to save him.

Failure was the only constant refrain in both of Durbe’s lives.

Nasch is shaking his head, screaming at Vector, pleading with Merag, crying for him – but Durbe can’t hear him, because there is a haze in his mind at the thought of losing Nasch again. After all these years, he found his best friend, and yet-

_Nasch leans on his throne, one hand tangled in his hair while the other holds a card. He’s been crying, and Durbe can hardly blame him. But Nasch has a duty, and he has to let go. He is no longer Ryoga Kamishiro._

_“My friend?” he ventures softly, and Nasch looks up, his arrogant human expression replaced by the same despondent hopelessness that Durbe had seen on his king’s face near the tragic end of their last lives together._

_“I was happy,” Nasch whispers, and he shakes his head furiously. “I was finally happy, I finally had friends and a purpose and… God, Durbe. Why did you take that from me?”_

_“It was temporary,” Durbe says, and he tries to ignore the piercing in his chest, because Nasch’s words hurt as though Nasch had stabbed him through the heart. But there is no heart there anymore, is there? They aren’t human. Not anymore. “It was always temporary, Nasch.”_

_Nasch rips the card in half and storms down the steps of his throne, pushing past Durbe with his hands clenched. At the door, he stops, but he doesn’t turn around. “I understand my responsibilities as the leader of the Barians. I really do. And I will do it because it is my fault that all of this happened to begin with. But you told me to let go of him, Durbe. Do you have any idea… how hard it is to let go of the sun once you finally manage to hold it in your fingers?”_

_And when the door slams behind him, Durbe picks up the torn pieces of the card and wonders what Armored XYZ meant to Ryoga Kamishiro._

-and yet his best friend found someone else to take away the pain, to ease his burdens, to share the weight of the world with, and it  _hurts_.

He places his cards and waits for his star to go cold, for the silence to take him, and as he looks back into Nasch’s eyes – and for a second, Nasch, not Ryoga Kamishiro, is the one looking back at him, tears streaming down his face, mouth moving soundlessly – he hopes his love for Nasch, his faith that he is doing the right thing for Barian World and for his king, and his hope for a better future shine through in this last, desperate play.

He smiles. It is a genuine smile, and how could it not be?

Because all the while, he knows that Nasch’s love, faith, and hope rest with someone else, but at least the sun, brighter and warmer and bringing more hope and promise for a better future than all seven stars together ever could, will still be there for Nasch to chase, even after the star he has held for three lifetimes goes dark and cold in his gentle hands.


End file.
